There’s more to interface design than just making clear, unconfusing layouts. Brand personality and emotion can be communicated through these touch points. We love to explore new ways for our clients to interact with their users.

Themes like exploration, suspense and surprise often appear in our work. Whether it’s for recreation or a tool – to design applications that engage, but also drive conversions – our philosophy is the same. Make it simple, make it fun, make it work!

Case Study – Virgin Radio International

The Jupiter Drawing Room (JDR) team came to us with an exceptional vision for the Virgin Radio branding. From our side, we were able to bring our unique understanding of designing and building experimental interfaces and applications to allow them to complete their vision for the site and produce something very special.

The great success of this project is that both teams were able to bring the full weight of their expertise to the table and inspire each other to produce a website that would have been hard to imagine if it had been briefed out in a traditional way.

The first phase of our development process was to expose the team to what was was happening in the interactive development space through a series of experiments. We then shortlisted a few of these to pursue to bring them in line with the creative vision. This resulted in a creative and technical ebb and flow that led to our final look and feel.

Once we had established our solution, it became evident that we needed to provide a comprehensive tool for the creative team to be able to craft at their leisure. This involved creating a live CMS type system where the JDR team could instantly customise and fine tune all the design elements including animation and sound integration for each station.

While JDR were fine tuning the interactive details, we were able to focus on all the behind the scenes requirements for the site. Responsiveness, browser compatibility and low power devices were especially large and important hurdles we needed to conquer.

Case Study – Bos

One of our favourite relationships over the years has been with Bos Iced Tea. We really enjoy the brand and the attitude towards new media and quality touch points. The Bos Designer is one of our best projects we have done for them. It was an exercise of restraint as it is a very simple frame work and concept that proves to be highly engaging and effective in rewarding their loyal fan base. Bos Designer has had tens of thousands of entries during its lifetime and has been used as a t-shirt designer, a surf designer and more abstract implementations. The latest version is a full Javascript app and is optimised for touch, as well as desk top, which posed some interesting challenges to tools and interaction. We have a high percentage of users that spend 30-minutes at a time on their designs with many breaking the two hour mark. We made the app so that it can be used online, offline, touch screen, desktop and mobile. It has proved to be enormously flexible and engaging for professional designers to kids.

Case Study – Markus Wormstorm

Experimental and atmospheric interfaces. A website for a sound engineer.

Local, legendary musician Markus Smit aka Markus Wormstorm approached us to develop an online, musical, interactive experience to showcase his work and identity. What ensued was a remarkable collaboration of creative minds exploring narrative, abstract, experiential concepts and one of the more unusual portfolio experiences you will have online. We were very conscious of making the experience light and fast and it was often an exercise in minimalism and implied complexity. It is a great example for us of how our work values users. Without interaction, the site is dead. It takes an adventurous mind and the slightest of curiosity to bring the site to life in a collaboration with whomever explores it.

Case Study – iFix

We love working with the super guys at Cow Africa and this is a great example of a simple idea that is fun and engaging for everyone who worked on it and everyone that interacted. That translates to a great user experience.

Case Study – Standard Bank

Case Study – Peter Gray

Sometimes the design needs to disappear and make room for the client’s product. A full brand development for an internationally acclaimed artist.

Peter Gray is a multi-award winning South African artist and a Donut Dad of whom we are very proud. He exhibits locally and internationally and is one of the most successful South African wildlife artists. We had the pleasure of putting together a website and social media campaign for him. Stop by and have a look at some of his work. It will be well worth your time.

Case Study – McDonald’s

We were tasked to produce a t-shirt designer application for a McDonald’s activation. Essentially the app was quite simple – brand communicators with tablets helped users to design slogans on a t-shirt and select their sizes and t-shirt designs using the app. There was an onsite printer who was printing t-shirts with around a 30-minute turnaround time. A user would design a t-shirt, it would be printed and it could then be collected a short while later. We created the system for creating and tracking order numbers, as well as an app for the printer to have access to print ready designs to make their process more efficient.

Tutorial – How to make a WordPress Plugin

Click to view a quick tutorial on how to make a WordPress plugin. It’s an open Google doc for easy reference and so that if you have any questions you can leave a comment for us. Have fun!